The official story of 7/7 collapses further and further: The great mastermind behind 7/7 is a co-worker of the British secret service MI6; large money transactions have taken place that point to foreknowledge of the attacks; the British government shares a rich history with terrorists; news about a bomb under a railway carriage points to more than fanatical rucksack tourists.

By Daan de Wit
This article has been translated into English by Marienella Meulensteen.

With the arrest of the notorious Haroon Rashid Aswat, a big fish was caught. The press gladly ran with the story and readers were impressed by the success of the terrorist sleuths. 'The British counterpart of Osama bin Laden' now becomes the possible mastermind and the missing link behind the attacks of 7/7, accused in a court case that is filed against him. The thing is that it is not what it appears to be.

Alleged mastermind behind 7/7 attacks is MI6 co-worker
Forbes writes :'Aswat has been named in US and British media reports as the alleged mastermind behind the July 7 suicide bomb attacks in London, but this has not been confirmed by police.' The case is getting a remarkable amount of play in the U.S., but not in England. The English let him walk time after time. According to terrorism expert John Loftus, the reason is that Aswat is an employee of MI6, the British secret service. In an interview with Dayside of TV channel Fox he says that the British first told the Americans that Aswat was dead. They believe it and discontinue the lawsuit against him. But also the American Department of Justice is obstructive and 'blocked efforts [to have Aswat convicted] by its prosecutors in Seattle in 2002'. However, the man surfaces alive and well in South Africa. Loftus: '[...] the Brits know that the CIA wants to get ahold of Haroon. So what happens? He takes off again, goes right to London. He isn't arrested when he lands, he isn't arrested when he leaves'. Interviewer Mike Jerrick exclaims: 'Even though he's on a watch list'. The transcript of the show continues:
'LOFTUS: He's on the watch list.The only reason he could get away with that was if he was working for British intelligence. He was a wanted man.
JERRICK: And then takes off the day before the bombings, I understand it--
LOFTUS: And goes to Pakistan.
JERRICK: And Pakistan, they jail him.
LOFTUS: The Pakistanis arrest him. They jail him. He's released within 24 hours. [...]'. Aswat is a free man again, returns to South Africa, then to Zimbabwe and subsequently to Zambia where he is arrested. He is now in London where he is awaiting an American trial because he is suspected of planning to establish a training camp for terrorists in 1999 in the American state of Oregon. While only last month the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that Scotland Yard was hunting for Aswat, it now appears that the Brits have no interest in the alleged mastermind. Maybe it is also in this case that having the situation under control means the end of the fun: Scotland Yard was 'not interested in speaking to Aswat about the London attacks', writes the N.Y. Post on August 8.

U.S. Federal Reserve conducts extraordinary transactions before 7/7
Besides the exercises-that-suddenly-became-reality and the presence in London of experience expert Rudolph Giuliani, there are another two clear links between 9/11 and 7/7, and they concern money and foreknowledge. On September 11, millions were earned by extraordinary speculation on, among others, two airline companies that were involved in the attacks. As we wrote in our Panorama magazine article about September 11, that money has never been cashed in on. Also, just before the attacks of 7/7 it was speculated with success that the stocks would plummet; besides that, the Federal Bank of the U.S. conducted remarkable financial transactions.
Just before 7/7 a number of conspicuous transactions took place. Large amounts of money were poured into the financial markets so that Wall Street converted the reaction of the exchanges on 7/7 from a large loss to a small gain: 'The one virtuoso performance of July 7 was that of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank, which flooded equity and capital markets with liquidity through such vehicles as the Plunge Protection Team (PPT), turning a big Wall Street loss into a small gain', writes Webster Tarpley. A blogger named The Cunning Realist has done some research and proves with some remarkable statistics (1 2) that the Federal Bank of the U.S., shortly before the attacks on July 7, pumped $35 billion into the market to soften eventual blows. The blogger who publicizes this news has a job looking at charts like these and compared the transactions of the Fed with other years, but had to conclude that in this case it showed 'extraordinary activity'. 'The terrorist attacks in London took place on Thursday. The Fed dramatically increased the pool of liquidity available for stocks to a multi-year high 48 hours before that --- an ideal amount of time for that liquidity to filter into the market --- and kept it elevated for the next few days. And indeed, it worked'.

Speculators profited from the attacks on 7/7 before 7/7
Insider Joseph Farah writes about the successful stock speculations just before 7/7: '[...] it appears some profited by short selling the British pound in the 10 days leading up to the attacks. The pound fell about 6 percent (approximately 1.82 to 1.72) against the dollar for no apparent reason - until, of course, the terror attacks sent the British markets reeling still further. [...] "This was an almost unprecedented weakness and far too sharp to be a coincidence," one economist with more than 35 years of experience in the investment industry [said ...]. The problem is that short selling of this kind can be done with near total anonymity. "Trade currency futures through a Swiss or Austrian bank via an offshore company incorporated in Cre te and you have a totally untraceable transaction," the economist noted. "No one will ever know who made the really big money off this situation, but I guarantee you this - someone did."' The question now is whether this was a dead Bin Laden from a cave in Pakistan or Western Financial experts who followed the markets hand-in-hand with the CIA.

Close ties between MI5 and terrorists
The close ties between the British secret service and Arabic terrorists like the aforementioned Haroon Rashid Aswat are not particularly unique. Already in 2002 we wrote in our September 11 article for Panorama that Bin Laden had paid a visit in 1996 to the British secret service MI5. Also in 2002, the BBC writes about the ties between MI5 and Abu Qatada, who is described in the article as 'Osama Bin Laden's European Ambassador'. 'He pledged to MI5 that he would not "bite the hand that fed him".' That 'fed' can also be taken literally: 'Mr Qatada and his family are being lodged, fed and clothed by British intelligence services', reports the BBC in quoting Time Magazine. 'He also promised to "report anyone damaging the interests of thi s country". Instead, he was recruiting for Al-Qaeda training camps', writes The Times. 'Tony Blair is bound to be asked about MI5's history with Abu Qatada and other militant clerics who have used Britain as their base'.

MI6 pays Al-Qaeda £100,000 to murder Qadaffy
Also in 2002, former MI5 agent David Shayler revealed that 'In 1996 Britain's exterior intelligence service, MI6, actually funded and worked with Al-Qaeda in a plot to assassinate and overthrow Libya's Muhammar Qaddafy', writes Mike Ruppert on page 137 of his book Crossing The Rubicon. It cost Shayler six months in jail, and Tony Blair even issued a D[efense] notice to keep the information under wraps, notes Ruppert, who refers to an article in The Observer, where despite that notice, information is still to be found: 'British intelligence paid large sums of money to an Al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Qadaffy in 1996 and thwarted early attemp ts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice'. It concerned £100,000, according to Shayler in the Observer article. While it was Qadaffy, mind you, who two years earlier was the first who had Bin Laden put on the wanted list of Interpol, writes Ruppert. Qadaffy held Bin Laden responsible for the murder of two German anti-terrorism agents in Libya. One of the members of the assassination cell was Anas al-Liby, a notorious terrorist with an American bounty on his head to the tune of $25 million. The Observer:'Astonishingly, despite suspicions that he was a high-level Al-Qaeda operative, al-Liby was given political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000 when he eluded a police raid on his house and fled abroad. The raid discovered a 180-page Al-Qaeda 'manual for jihad' containing instructions for terrorist attacks'.Also part of the case against David Shayler was his statement tha t MI5 withheld information that could have prevented the attacks in London in 1993 and 1994, writes The Scotsman.

Londonistan recruiting ground for fanatical black sheep
'"MI-6 is in bed with al Qaeda", Shayler told the crowd', writes Webster Tarpley in his account of the London part of the 9/11 tour of truth (see also this report of the speeches by Tarpley and DaanSpeak in Amsterdam). In his book 9/11 - Synthetic Terror - Made in USA, Tarpley writes in a chapter titled Al-Qaeda and Londonistan: 'There is every reason to believe that London is one of the main recruiting grounds for patsies, dupes, fanatics, double agents, and other roustabouts of the terrorist scene'. To prove this he gives various examples, like this citation from the Daily Telegraph: 'Britain is now an international center for Islamic militancy on a huge scale [...] and the capital is the home to a bewildering variety of radical Islamic fundamentalist movements, many of which make no secret of their commitment to violence and terrorism to achieve their goals'. In an article from October 2001 with the title Why the Real Name Is 'Osama Bin London', the often well-received EIR cites someone who speaks for Bin Laden in a London-based Arabic newspaper as saying: 'that "we have a covenant of peace with the British government"'. In 2000 EIR wrote a memo to the then American Secretary of State, titled: 'Put Britain on the List of States Sponsoring Terrorism'. Tarpley in his book: 'Imam Qureshi of Brixton and others were allowed by the British authorities to preach anti-US sermons to the some 4,000 Muslim inmates in British prisons, and thus to recruit new parties for the world-wide terror machine'. The examples are so numerous that it is a subject in and of itself.

Bomb under rail carriage on 7/7 undermines official version of attack
On his website, Alex Jones refers to an interesting article by the Cambridge Evening News in which an eyewitness testifies: 'As they made their way out, a policeman pointed out where the bomb had been. "The policeman said 'mind that hole, that's where the bomb was'. The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train. They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag," he said.' Mark Honigsbaum of The Guardian also talks in this radio report [RealPlayer] with witnesses about a bomb under the rail carriage.
If indeed this is about bombs under carriages, then the official story of the four rucksack terrorists falls apart even more. A bomb under a carriage requires that the bomber can enter a part of the London Underground where outsiders are not allowed to enter. This points even more in the direction of previous articles in this series that stressed facts indicating that an exercise was prepared that very accidentally became reality. In this scenario, the bombers, under the guise of preparing an exercise, can do their work without being disturbed. The rucksack terrorists would only serve as patsies, just like the hijackers on September 11, who did not destroy the three WTC towers with their planes (there also it probably involved preset bombs, and possibly remote controlled airplanes).
By openly preparing for a so-called exercise, you don't have to set up an enormous conspiracy: 'Thus the drill also helps keep the number of witting accomplices small. You don't need an entire agency made up of homicidal sociopaths', writes John Leonard. Then you place a short message from an unknown jihad organization on an obscure web page, in which you even misquote the Quran, and everyone will accept straight away that the Islamic warriors are the perpetrators. The text was on a server about which The Guardian writes: 'The server in Houston has intriguing connections. Everyone's Internet was founded by brothers Robert and Roy Marsh in 1998 and by 2002 had an income of more than $30m (now about £17m). Renowned for his charitable work, Roy Marsh counts among his friends President George Bush's former sister-in-law, Sharon Bu sh, and the president's navy secretary'.

Wild stories in the press are retracted
Magdy el-Nashar is, alongside the aforementioned Haroon Rashid Aswat, another alleged mastermind of the attacks on 7/7, as appears from various press bulletins. Meanwhile, he has been found innocent after questioning in Egypt where he was on holiday: 'El-Nashar called his detention "a nightmare," especially when interrogators suggested he was "the mastermind behind the London bombings."', writes Newsday. He now wants to return to London: '"I want to go back again. But I am afraid, honestly, I am afraid. Propaganda against me made people think I am terrorist. My picture is everywhere. Some said I am the first man (behind the attacks). The most-wanted man. If I walk down the street and someone recognizes me, he might kill me," el-Nashar said. "I am innoce nt". The bulletin was hard for el-Nashar at first. To give an example, Het Parool wrote on July 15 on the front page with the headline ''Mastermind attacks arrested in Cairo'': 'In a suburb of Cairo, an Egyptian biochemist was arrested who possibly was the mastermind behind the terror attacks in London'.
Another example of journalistic damage is the item about the English boy who was wrongfully presented as a bombing suspect. With the surfacing of this information, another little fact proved to be an illusion: 'Evidence showing that all three of the London bombers of Pakistani descent visited Pakistan last year has been thrown into doubt', writes the BBC, because it was not a third alleged terrorist who had been to Pakistan, but instead a 16-year old boy who happens to have the same last name.
Both wild news items turned out to be incorrect after all and had to be retracted, but that does not help very much. The man-in-the-street knows only that two dangerous types from the Middle East have once again been picked up. Bad news has more of an impact and distribution than a story that is retracted, plus a correction never completely erases the impression that was created in the first place.

Exercise-that-becomes-reality is repeated phenomenon
The attacks in London on 7/7 were not the first example of exercises-that-just-happened-to-become-reality. Earlier there were the war games on September 11, partly under the supervision of Mayor Giuliani - the man who happened to be in London during the attacks. Tarpley adds another example: 'So it was with the Hinckley attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan, when a presidential succession exercise was scheduled for the next day, as I showed in my George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (1992; reprint by Progressive Press, 2004)'.
In the case of Reagan's demise, Bush would have become president. While Vice President Bush revealed a plaque at the hotel where President Kennedy spent his last night, John W. Hinckley Jr. [AVI] shot President Reagan, after which the rehearsal for the presidential succession for the next day was cancelled. Tarpley writes in his book that the day after the assault it came out that the shooter's brother was invited for dinner by Neil Bush, the son of the vice president. Neil's wife said to the Houston Post that the Hinckley family had donated a lot of money to the Bush campaign. The parents of the shooter Hinckley write in their memoirs that their son, after the assault in his cell before being transferred to an institution, in a series of notes "described an imaginary conspiracy --either with the political left or the political right [...] to assas inate the President."' The notes, together with dozens of other pages, were withheld by the FBI and were not admitted in the trial against the shooter.